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George Russell ‘Æ’ (1867-1935) CHILDREN SEATED NEAR SAND DUNES signed with monogram lower left oi...

Currency:EUR Category:Everything Else / Other Start Price:NA Estimated At:7,000.00 - 9,000.00 EUR
George Russell ‘Æ’ (1867-1935) CHILDREN SEATED NEAR SAND DUNES signed with monogram lower left oi...
George Russell ‘Æ’ (1867-1935)
CHILDREN SEATED NEAR SAND DUNES
signed with monogram lower left
oil on canvas
51 by 66cm., 20 by 26in.
Provenance:
Gore-Booth family, Lisadell, Co. Sligo;
Mealy’s auction, Castlecomer, Co. Kilkenny, May 2002
This is a painting with an impeccable provenance. Æ and the two Gore-Booth sisters, Constance, later Countess Markievicz, and Eva the poet, knew each other well. Æ thought highly of them both. The Markieviczes arrived in Dublin in the autumn of 1903 and lived not too far from Æ in Rathgar. They regularly attended Æ’s Sunday evening ‘At Homes’, where the discussion included art, literature, politics and the future of Ireland. In a privately printed poem, Salutation - A poem on the Irish Rebellion 1916, Æ dedicated a verse to the part Constance played and to her bravery.
It was Constance and her husband who were responsible for the first public exhibition of Æ’s paintings. They persuaded him to join them in an exhibition of their work at the Leinster Lecture Hall, Dublin, in August 1904, where he sold over half of the 65 paintings on the first day. They continued to exhibit together for all but one of the next eight years.
The present work is interesting in that Æ’s under-drawing is perceptible through the semitransparent oil paint. It reveals that he may have originally intended to paint a group of children sitting in a semi- circle, rather than simply a pair of children. One can now only guess at the reasons for this change in composition. It is well known that Æ painted what he saw. In this picture these are real, not fairy, children whom he may well have encountered on his travels in rural Ireland for Horace Plunkett’s Irish Agricultural Organisation Society; the others may have run away. In a letter which Æ wrote to Constance’s father in mid-September 1904 he mentions a picture which he was painting for Gore-Booth: "….I have been working on the legs of the boy and expect to finish him next Sunday and will have him sent on to Lissadell next week, or to Sligo station as I don’t know how to send it further…" (Public Record Office of Northern Ireland). Whilst the exact identity of the painting mentioned cannot be determined, the letter highlights the artistic patronage which the Gore-Booths extended to Æ.
Diana Beale, October 2002
(who is currently preparing a book on Æ as a painter)
€7,000-€9,000 (IR £5,500-£7,000 approx.)
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